Bosnian Serbs Spurn Un Pact, Set Referendum

PALE, Bosnia-Herzegovina — After a day and night of heated debate, the Bosnian Serb parliament voted overwhelmingly early Thursday to let the people decide whether to accept peace or to continue Bosnia's bloody ethnic war.

The vote was, in effect, a rejection of the UN peace plan already accepted by Bosnia's Muslims and Croatians.

Deputies scheduled a referendum for May 15 and 16. Whether that will forestall military intervention by the U.S. and its allies is uncertain.

Some viewed the assembly's decision as an act of defiance that may amount to "suicide."

The vote was 51-2, with 12 abstentions.

It came about 4:30 a.m. Thursday, after 17 hours of debate and despite the pleas of leaders that included the Bosnian Serbs' own president and the leaders of Serbia, Yugoslavia and Greece.

Thursday morning Mitsotakis told reporters that "my effort was not successful." He noted that the plan's rejection came despite efforts by Serb leaders and said, "The U.S., UN and NATO should take note of this."

Yugoslav President Drobica Cosic said the parliament has made "the worst decision this nation has ever seen. Political reason has been defeated. This country and its people are from tomorrow on in great uncertainty. I don't know what the next night will bring to this country."

In Moscow, meanwhile, Russian President Boris Yeltsin opened a historic new avenue of cooperation with the West by pledging to have Russian troops join their former NATO adversaries in a heavily armed peacekeeping force for Bosnia.

But he sidestepped the politically troublesome question of whether to support American-led military action, such as airstrikes, against the Bosnian Serbs if they fail to live up to the UN-brokered peace treaty.

Yeltsin told Secretary of State Warren Christopher that it was "premature" to consider President Clinton's military strategy before the Bosnian Serbs decide on the UN accord, crafted by America's Cyrus Vance and Britain's Lord Owen.

But Christopher found Yeltsin ready, even eager, to volunteer Russian troops for potentially hazardous peacekeeping duty in Bosnia.

It would be the first time since the end of World War II that the former Cold War adversaries would be cooperating as military allies on the ground in a potentially hostile situation.

Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev found virtue in ambiguity as he publicly urged the the Serbs to ratify the peace treaty without specifying the consequences if they do not.

"Try to remember that in Christian tradition . . . it is rare that hell is described in specific terms," Kozyrev said at a brief press conference alongside Christopher. "It is even more threatening and more meaningful when hell is used as something which will follow sins."

Christopher came away from the two-hour Kremlin meeting saying that he was satisfied that Yeltsin hadn't rejected possible military action against the Serbs, who have historic ethnic and religious ties with Russia.

American officials chose to be encouraged to hear the Russian leader say that he would consider unspecificed "new and tougher" measures if the Bosnian Serbs continue the war.

Christopher told reporters afterwards that the military options remain "very much on the table" for further consideration if the Bosnian Serbs balk at the accord, which calls for a cease-fire, collection of the heavy weapons besieging Bosnian cities, and a new political map dividing the country into 10 semi-autonomous provinces largely along ethnic lines.

Yeltsin assured Christopher that in terms of military action "nothing would be predetermined or excluded," a senior U.S. official said.

In Bosnia, meanwhile, the Bosnian Serb assembly met behind closed doors in the banquet hall of a ski resort at Pale, near where some events of the 1984 Winter Olympics were held.

The deputies heard their leaders-including Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and the Bosnian Serbs' own president, Radovan Karadzic-plead for acceptance of the Vance-Owen plan, lest the Serbs fall under U.S. and allied air bombardment.

As the hours wore on, the pleas to turned to angry shouts.

"What we have now we can't afford to put at stake and lose like a drunken poker player," Milosevic shouted in frustration around 1:30 a.m. Thursday after hours of debate.

But many of the deputies said they could not put aside the months of bloodshed, and they spoke emotionally of the men, women and children who have died in ethnic violence. An estimated 134,000 Bosnian Serbs, Muslims and Croatians have died or disappeared in the civil war.

"We gave everything we had. We gave the lives of our people on the front lines and in the hospitals," said Biljana Plavsic, vice president of the parliament. "We can't stomp on this flag now."

To accept the plan after so may deaths "would be a disgrace for us," said deputy Dusan Kozic.